Crystal Gryphon Read Free Page A

the Spitting Toad that I had been wed. As I came closer to manhood, the thought of that distant lady began now and then to trouble me oddly. There were two lads near my years in the foresters’ hold, but from the first they had not been playmates, or later companions. Not only did rank separate us, but they had made me aware, from the beginning of my consciousness of the world about me, that my non-human appearance cut me off from easy friendships. I had given my friendship to only two men—Jago, old enough to be my father, and Riwal, who could have been an older brother (and how I sometimes wished that was the truth!).
    But those forester lads went now to the autumn fair with lass-ribbons tied to the upper latches of their jerkins, whispering and laughing about the adventures those led them to. This brought to me the first strong foreboding that when it did at last come time to claim the Lady Joisan in person, she might find me as ill a sight as had my mother. What would happen when my wife came to Ulmsdale and I must go to bide with her? If she turned from me in open loathing—
    Nightmares began to haunt my sleep, and Riwal at last spoke to me with the bluntness he could use upon occasion. When he demanded what ill thought rode me, I told him the truth, hoping against hope that he would speedily assure me that I saw monsters where there were only shadows, and that I had nothing to fear—though my good sense and experience argued on the side of disaster.
    But he did not give me that reassurance. Instead he was silent for a space, looking down at his hands, which had been busied fitting together some of his image fragments, but now rested quiet on the table.
    “There has ever been truth between us, Kerovan,” he said at last. “To me who knows you well—above all others would I choose to walk in your company. But how can I promise you that this will turn to happiness? I can only wish you peace and—” he hesitated. “Once I walked a path that I thought might end in hand-fasting and I was happy for a little. But while you bear your differences to others openly, I bear mine within. Still, there they be. And the one with whom I would have shared Cup and Flame—she saw those differences, and they made her uneasy.”
    “But you were not already wed,” I ventured, when he fell silent.
    “No, I was not. And I had something else.”
    “That being?” I was quick to ask.
    “This!” He spread out his hands in a gesture to encompass all that was about him under that roof.
    “Then I shall have this also,” I said. Marry I had, for the sake of custom and my father's peace of mind. What I had seen and heard of marriages among the dale lords did not set happiness high. Heirs and lords married to increase their holdings by a maid's dowry, to get a new heir for the line. If inclination and liking came afterward, that was happiness, but it certainly did not always follow so.
    “Perhaps you can.” Riwal nodded. “There is something I have long thought on. Perhaps this is the time to do it.”
    “Follow the road!” I was on my feet, as eager as if he meant to set out upon that beckoning mystery this very moment. For a mystery it was, and beckon it did.
    We had come across it on our last venture into the Waste, a road of such building as put any dale's effort toshame, making our roads seem like rough tracks fit only for beasts. The end of the road we had chanced upon was just that, a sharp chopping-off of that carefully laid pavement, with nothing about the end to explain the why-for. The mystery began nearly on our doorstep, for that end point was less than a half day's journey from Riwal's cot. The road ran on back into the Waste, wide, straight, only a little cloaked here and there by the drift of windborne soil. To find its other end was a project we had indeed long held in mind. The suggestion that we set out on this journey quite pushed from my mind the thought of Joisan. She was just a name anyway, and any meeting